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Category Archives for Trying to Save the Planet

It has been almost a year since my surgeries and the fear of future infections has not subsided. Of course I didn’t help myself out in the least this morning, as I got pulled into a documentary on FrontlinePBS about Hunting Nightmare Bacteria. My nightmare began as a bartholin abcess from a marsupialization that did not take. While on vacation, or on the way back from Nashville, I contracted some sort of bacteria that made it’s home in the cyst. In the beginning they believed that it was some form of Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA. They quickly learned that it was an unknown (at least to them) strain of Necrotizing fasciitis, that was quickly eating away at my flesh from the inside out and that it was resistant to the incredible amounts of high-dosed antibiotics that they were giving me. They still don’t know exactly what exact strain my body was harboring, ending up having to cut out the dying flesh and do skin grafts, taking skin from the front of my left thigh. All in all I had four surgeries in eight days, spent over two weeks in the hospital at the University of Michigan, spent three weeks total in a bed not being able to walk and am still healing.

Finished packing after 3rd surgery.

Skin graft from left front thigh…

We must educate ourselves on these super-bugs, as they are getting stronger and stronger. I am one of the lucky ones, they were able to catch mine and save my life. What scares me most is that there are strains out there becoming unstoppable, soon our antibiotics will work no longer…

If you would like to watch my recovery journey, I would love for you to visit me on my youtube channel here!

I saw this floating around today and had to bring it to the masses… well, my masses. This has got to be one of the most beautiful photos that I have seen. It is everything that I strive to be. I love that the labels are taken away and we are left with expression, joy and pure love. I wish that all the people who bring themselves into my life felt this exact way….

I had to chuckle being that recently I watched a documentary on HBO about real-life Superheroes … LOVED it!!! Actually, you can follow the Real Life Superhero Project on both Twitter and Facebook! There should be an explanation of how incredibly giddy I was when I found that out, but I just haven’t been able to come up with the words yet. Of course I joined both! I want to sit down with all of them for a day and photograph each in their everyday settings.

I know that this gentleman is not dressed as a superhero, yet something about the Spiderman hoodie and the, what seems to be, Spongebob lounge pants, my thoughts got the best of me. What if that’s how it was for Spiderman to run out to grab his laundry from the corner laundrymat? Just throw the mask back, no care about the world… makes me giggle.

Industrial designer Andrew Kim has created a new Coke bottle concept that could significantly change the soda maker’s footprint. For every 4 bottles currently shipped, the square bottle design could ship 6. This means every shipping container could hold 4,000 more bottles of Coke. Kim also considered that Americans use 2 million plastic bottles every 5 minutes, so he made the bottle itself green. It is 100% plant based, made entirely from sugar cane byproducts. Which is amusing since Coke hasn’t been made from sugar since 1985 (via Jerry James Stone)